This post was submitted by Jeremy Gloff

It was the worse spider bite I ever had.  At least that’s what I thought it was. When I woke up on that December morning in 2007 with a blemish above my nipple I mindlessly tried to pop it and then went along with my day.

That blemish did not pop,  but as the day wore on it became increasingly painful. It was then I assumed I was harboring a nasty spider bite. A red patch of infection began to infiltrate my entire upper body. This blemish was so tender that even my shirt brushing against it provoked a sharp burning sensation. When I attended an art show that evening I made a conversation piece out of the terrible “spider bite” that was ruining my time.

By the time I got home the blemish had turned into a golf-ball sized mass of puss and pain. My entire upper body was encased by a red rash, and I was terrified. I didn’t know what to do. I kept poking myself with needles and wishing whatever was happening to my body would stop.

At work the next day the infection underneath my shirt had gotten so massive and painful that I asked to be sent home. At my $100 visit to a walk-in doctor’s clinic I learned that the terrifying mass on my chest wasn’t a spider bite, but instead a staph infection. And so the nightmare began.

I was put on ten days of antibiotics. When that first infection finally “came to a head” it burst and a painful surge of puss released from my body. As the staph infection drained a long white string of mass issued from the sore. I remember the terror of being alone in my bathroom covered in puss and blood. I was relieved that the throbbing pressure of my boil was gone but still in a lot of pain.

Over the next six months I kept getting staph infections.  These infections were still painful but not as much as the first one. The walk-in clinic kept issuing ten day stints of antibiotics. After thirty days of no infection one (or two or three) would reappear. I began to feel as if my own body was cursed. Sometimes the clinic said I had MRSA, other times they said I didn’t.

Sometimes when the infections were especially painful I tried to expedite the process of them “coming to a head”. Many terrifying late nights were spent poking searing hot needles into my body trying to drain the sores and just be “normal”. Internet searches about staph  infections were vague and terrifying. Sometimes in the middle of the night I worked myself into such a frenzy I called 1-800 Ask-A-Nurse numbers just to have someone to talk to. Perhaps I was over-reacting and being a maniac but the truth was that no matter how many pills I took these big sores kept returning to my body. I took the obligatory HIV test and I was negative. And the sores kept returning.

I sterilized my entire apartment. I washed every linen in boiling water. I kept buying new razors. I wore rubber gloves when doing anything. Nothing worked. The infections kept coming back.

After sinking hundreds of dollars and hours into the walk-in clinic I finally made a list of questions for the physician in an effort to educate myself in better preventive maintenance for these infections. I never had them “lanced” because I was poor and the thousand dollar tales of emergency room lancing further made me ill. Was it necessary for me to have these sores lanced? Should they all come to a head? Is it normal for them to keep coming back? Quietly I sat on the waiting table hoping the doctor could give me some answers and guidance.

When the doctor arrived I told him I had some questions.  He told me this was fine but that I needed to “hurry up.” And so I sat in the back of a shitty walk-in clinic with a doctor telling me my medical questions weren’t worth his time. I stormed out into the lobby, raised a scene, wrote a letter, and saw that this doctor wasn’t working there a couple weeks later. Despite the fact I let the medical establishment know you can’t fuck with terrified patients, my body kept getting infected. It was time to make a change.

Once I walked into the office of Dr. Martha Ford I knew I was in good hands. I didn’t have a primary physician since I was very young and it was reassuring to know I was finally going to be taken care of. When Dr. Ford told me she loved my shoes I was sold.

I had to return to Dr. Ford’s office five or six more times before the infections stopped coming back. With different combinations of antibiotics (mostly acne prevention meds) my body stopped getting staph infections. I still have a few scars from the bad boils. They look like burns.

I am writing this for anyone whose body is doing things that scare you and mystify you. Don’t keep going back to walk-in clinics if they are dismissive. Don’t return to a doctor that doesn’t make you feel like you matter. And don’t sit alone in a bathroom in the middle of the night with a lighter and needle trying to prod an infection out of your body.

The biggest scar is on my chest above my right nipple. It is a constant reminder of the year I spent trying to rid my body of staph.

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